Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 163 - The Pancho Villa Expedition Part 1: Dueling Race Wars

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

The US fucks around in Mexican politics and eventually finds out. Sources: https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwi/108653.htm https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/fall/mexican-punitive-expedition-1.html https://history.army.mil/html/reference/army_flag/mexex.html https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/pursuing-pancho-villa.htm Pancho Villa and the Attack on Columbus, New Mexico Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of Lines Little by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me, as more frequently always now, Liam. Hey. What's up, buddy? Oh, not too much, dude. It's 95 degrees in Philly. Jesus. I'm recording this shirtless.

The AC in our house physically can't lower the temperature. I've got fan whine in my fucking ear from our home server. I've got a oh god a monster energy ultra watermelon

which is absolutely fucking disgusting tasting and I like the zero sugar monsters but this thing is like candy I can't complain too much about the heat here obviously like I'm missing this heat dome or

whatever that everybody's living through right now thank god he moved out of the pacific northwest i was thinking that before we started yeah my house is gonna like the house that i used to live in is absolutely gonna burn to the ground uh like one of the weird parts yeah one of the weird parts about hawaii is it like it never gets super hot like it it'll it'll breach the 90s occasionally but it also never gets cold so like you're looking at like a 15 degree north or south movement um which can be weird especially being a guy from michigan who came from the pacific northwest um and since we're doing a can check i'm quenching my thirst with a black cherry vanilla bang because my heart has wronged me and i'm trying to kill it oh god that's gonna help your tbi buddy that's right the the medicinal qualities of of pure

chemistry being chugged on an hourly basis for my brain damage. I've also got a Gatorade. Don't worry about it. I believe my water bottle's empty because I did not plan ahead. But you know who else didn't plan ahead? America. Yeah, we seem to do that a lot. How did we find ourselves

in this position again? You know, like, so we're talking about Pancho via and the the what's generally called the poncho via expedition um now normally i i guess this is like my unpopular uh history take is that whenever anybody is like did you guys learn about this in school i was like yes you just weren't paying attention uh or we were literal children and didn't know how to process and memorize this shit right this is one thing i actually did not really learn anything about other than like he raided into the u.s and then we uh world war one happened

and nothing happened in between right like don't need to mention that little detail uh about that um and like i after researching this i figured i figured out um why and it wasn't because the world i mean obviously world war one did happen immediately afterwards and then you know it was a much bigger part of our collective military and civil history in the united states but um it was just bad like nothing good happened here like the battle of columbus which we will talk about in this episode and the expedition episode two um like if it was just the battle of columbus like yeah the u.s military actually looks good there. Way to go, gentlemen. We did it! Yeah.

And then it's all downhill from there. Because much like... Of course it is! It's like this weird... Especially being, you know, I'm 33 now. You're what, 30? 29, buddy. 29. You're almost on the backside.

I'll do that to me. Like, our lived experiences and histories and i assume most of our listeners as well is that like the u.s military is like a giant military juggernaut that can do whatever it wants wherever it wants right um and that like we're talking at a point of history where that wasn't even close to being a concept that could exist yet. The Federal Army was laughably small because if you remember,

there's a whole amendment about that. The Founding Fathers really did not trust a gigantic standing army, so we just didn't have one. It was a couple thousand dudes spread mostly across the west um and like it was mostly based around national guard units um which we're not uh what you could

what you would call like a one-to-one comparison to today's national guard they were not a professional military force at all it was like your drunk uncle who's missing hands oh yeah that's why they call him nine-finger steve don't worry about it we got him guarding the armory yeah and like we're gonna talk about a part of american military history where we're obviously doing uh like proxy imperialism with money because we got we still have money right uh but we don't quite have the weapons to do it physically but we try anyway and it it it doesn't go great um but as long-time listeners of the show probably picked up we have something of a trend throughout

american history is that we like to get involved in dumb wars with no real end goal america yeah uh much like the mulan dipping sauce of rick and mori this is something of our series arc um in this case of being a big collapsing dumb empire uh though like it's kind of like buzz lightyear and never really stopped collapsing it got to the point like this can't possibly be sustainable 2021 baby we're still here we're still it's fine that's fine it's fine i i you know you're just like oh i don't understand how the roman empire took so long to oh yeah yeah it's one of those things that when you look at the breadth of history that's like okay so things just don't happen overnight like there there's no guy that

witnessed the fall of rome like it happened uh now if you talk if you talk to stefan molyneux's crowd it happened because of brown people. And I'm sure there's a large group of people in America that believe the same thing about us eventually. So, you know, it's bad. Also, they're both wrong. Moving on. Instead, we're, you know, I would say if we're going to look at a dumb fucked up war that didn't need to exist going back in American history. I mean, we already talked about the War of 1812.

So we have to go like the other ones. So instead we're going to talk about something of a more fucked up, dumb flavor of American war. One that honestly, in my opinion, really plants the seeds of a lot of future shit we would do because

we thought that this was okay and really didn't suffer any kind of political or civil backlash. So they're like, oh, I guess this is fine then. Now, obviously, there's a lot of people in the comments that are going to say this happened in the early 1900s. Things like us getting involved in Latin America and the Kingdom of Hawaii have already occurred. Yes, I'm aware. Those are much smaller. We haven't done an incursion yet. Yes, I'm sorry that I have not covered every footstep of American history.

Give me time. We'll get there, folks. Yeah. Keep listening, and eventually I'll run out of things to talk about. As long as we stop doing dumb things, which I know which part I'm going to put my money on. doing dumb things, which I know which part I'm going to put my money on. Now, we are going to talk about the time that we invaded Mexico, though. We do not like to use that term to chase a guy named Pancho Villa with no real method or plan. And like I said, it's something that people like to forget that happened because World War Two or sorry,

World War One happened immediately afterwards and made our army actually marginally less dumb, which is why people like to focus on it. And obviously, the large battles take place in World War I that we wished would have happened in Mexico, and nobody wanted to do that. It's like that joke, what if we have a war and nobody shows up? That kind of happened. Mexico's like yeah

we're not really gonna take part in this bye guys guys you guys hey someone come fight me instead no don't fight me like that come fight me like you know i was fighting myself exactly how i would want to fight. Armies are dumb. Now, if you were to sit through, I don't know, maybe a history class in New Mexico or Texas, maybe you'd learn more about this. Probably not. But you'd probably hear about this crazed Mexican

bandit who stormed over the border, leaving the US with no choice but to slap together an expeditionary force and chase him through Mexico. Turns out he was pretty cool. We're not the victims here, which seems to be, I mean, yes, he did invade the U.S. via a

raid, but a lot of things happened before that. Obviously, this is your disclaimer that, no, we are not in favor of riding horses through towns and shooting civilians however sometimes one thing leads to another I always knew this relationship would

break down I didn't know it was going to be horse raids podcast over it's been good anyway cue the credits Podcast over. It's been good. Anyway, cue the credits. Just something by myself in my room.

Now, the seeds of what we're going to be talking about, the expedition and all of everything in between were planted during the Mexican Revolution, which we almost certainly helped cause. I'm not going to dive into a full history of the Mexican Revolution here. I've already laid out. We're only talking two episodes. Sorry about it.

If you would like a full, in-depth, exhaustive course on the Mexican Revolution, I cannot recommend mike duncan's uh revolution podcast that covers it all much better than i ever would no this is not a paid plug i just really like that show um now also i'm going to mispronounce a lot of shit here um one i don't speak spanish two if i tried you'd still make fun of me so deal it. Now, what instead I'm going to do is one, do my best and to talk about how exactly we got involved in all this. Because if you think our history and meddling in other parts of the world is new, buckle up. Now, the US supported Mexican President Porfirio Diaz. And the two had a very, very close relationship in

regards to trade and other stuff like investments and things like that at one point diaz decided he wasn't going to run for president anymore and he changed his mind uh and then ran anyway uh and then to make things even better he imprisoned all of his political opponents good for him now at the time i know this isn't going to sound weird to you know us in the modern day but the u.s mexico border was virtually open at the time uh you could just kind of go back and forth almost like borders are pointless and i guess it wins again baby but yeah for a long time there uh you know no you don't really seem to care uh how is it a rating? It's an open border. Oh, that'll change. Oh, OK.

Now, historically, whenever an uprising or a crackdown occurred in Mexico in the political sphere, a lot of people on the opposite side of that crackdown would flee across the U.S. border. You know, like I said, there was there's no border patrol yet. said there was there's no border patrol yet uh they wouldn't be even found until 1924 where it began its reign of terror and as a wandering death squad that continues till this day um like there was some like states that had some kind of very light border enforcement uh we will talk about that a little bit later i know some people probably tearing their hair out. But it's almost like a line in the dirt isn't all that important at some point in history. And it wasn't like back then there was no flow of people. There was always a northerly flow of Mexican workers coming to work in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, wherever. That was absolutely still happening.

mexico arizona wherever uh that was absolutely still happening now anyway uh a lot of these uh the political opponents from mexico would use the u.s as a safe haven knowing that you know no mexican soldiers are going to come kick open their door and arrest them to build political and military support as well as like fundraise uh because this might surprise you texas has a rather large mexican population and this is because it's Mexican. We stole it. Scoreboard, baby. Right. Don't worry.

Our series on the Texan revolution is coming at some point. And, yep, just prepare yourself for that, Texas. I have to publish that before I somehow relocate back to Texas and get lynched. Yeah, that's coming. Good luck to you, Joe. Yeah, that's good. This population of diaspora would fund and staff various movements. This is something that, as an Armenian, very, very obvious to me.

Armenian diaspora are incredibly powerful and they're organizing and fundraising capabilities and like mexicans would do the same thing for their move whatever their movement was down in down in mexico at the time um and diaz's enemy francisco maduro uh did just that and he hid he hid out in san antonio uh shit city if i'm going to say so myself bad choice sir pick austin the river the river walk is pretty disappointing alamo is all right uh except that you it's none of it's open i was just in austin and san antonio yeah you can just like walk around it yeah and you get to see the statues and then you go home you know everybody always shit talks like say egypt for uh the gross commercialization

of like the the pyramids or whatever like oh there's a shit on the alamo yeah like you go outside the alamo there's like four bars and eight restaurants and two and people hawking shit on every corner and uh and surrounded by skyscrapers Bible thumpers yelling at me

yes also that yeah I will say this San Antonio still better than Houston that's true Houston is fucking hell on earth now Maduro called the election that Diaz won rigged and he wanted

to be nullified stop the count if you will that's crazy now to be fair he was probably not lying it was probably a complete uh fraudulent bullshit um and the u.s generally didn't give a shit about any of this until the report came out that maduro was rallying people to his cause which would cause unrest within mexico now one of the reasons the u.s was so close to diaz and mexico was due to the massive amount of money that the u.s, one of the reasons the US was so close to Diaz and Mexico was due

to the massive amount of money that the US had invested into the economy. It's thought to be around $2 billion in 1900s money. So a lot of money, right? Now, the US knew if Diaz didn't fuck off like he said he would, the unrest and probable civil war that would follow would tank their investments. And if there's one through line that you can follow through history is if you do not want Americans showing up with guns, and you can sub out Americans, British,

Soviet, Russian, Chinese, whatever, you do not fuck up with the money. You just do not fuck with the bank accounts. If you do not want an imperial power parking on your doorstep and kicking in your door... What's up, guys? Don't mess with the money, right?

And that's what they were worried about. So President William Howard Taft deployed soldiers to the border. Now, this was thought to be a support for Maduro, showing that, like, hey, look, we know that he's here, and also, like, we're going to put soldiers here so you guys can't fight on the border. Right now, this is despite TAP's personal and America's previous support for President Diaz. They realized that like, hey, Diaz lied.

He's more than more than Maduro gaining support. Diaz was incredibly unpopular. So like, look, I need to leave. Diaz resigned shortly thereafter, seeing his main supporter, that being the US, telling him to go away, which led to another election and surprise, Maduro won, becoming president. Now, Maduro is not like a man of the people. He's one of the richest families in the entire country. And it did not take him long to piss everyone off from the elites down to the common people because he had no idea what he was doing. Within just one year of being elected,

there are four revolts, which is good if you're going for a high score. He didn't want to stop at the hat trick. He wanted to go for one more. Now, this time, not only was the US pissed to see the unrest problem from before that they were trying to get ahead of, then

made even worse, but so was the Mexican military, which was also run by a different group of elites that also hated Maduro. As one does. Now, the military began to plot to overthrow Maduro, putting General Victoriano Puerta in

charge of the whole thing. Hell of a name. Yeah. Now, completely separate from everything else, I once got pulled over by a cop with the last name Huerta and he was a dick. So I'm going to assume that,

I don't know, it runs in the name. It's universal. It's universal. Yeah, all Huertas are bastards. That's not true. ADAB. Unless you're listening to this show

and your last name is Huerta, you're cool. Now, he would eventually be in charge of the whole thing, but before they did that, they had to reach out to the U.S. to let them know what they were doing. Not to help them, but to inform them like, hey,

I'm going to take over. They reached out to U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who instead of just saying, yeah, sure, fine, whatever, fully got involved and was helping plan the coup. I like that. I like that. He had real can-do attitude. The best part was, like, President didn't actually know. Wilson did was feed the president news articles from Mexico

that were like, hey, look how much of a piece of shit Maduro is. This Huerta guy is cool. Also, I'm doing a coup. We would never do anything to anyone named Maduro ever again, thank God. Yep. Eventually, the military did launch its coup

and after the so-called 10 tragic days of just horrible violence, Maduro resigned and General Huerta called up the president of the United States and said, quote, I have the honor to inform you I've overthrown this government. The armed forces support me. And from now on, peace and prosperity will reign. And then declared himself president. And then shot Maduro. Oh, okay. Mexico, a country famous for its stability. peace and prosperity will reign and then declared himself president and then shot maduro oh okay country famous for its stability um now here's a small problem now we don't know what taft would

have done in the situation because he wasn't president anymore um generally speaking the guy that you don't want to do this around is is president woodrow wilson not because he was a good person or even a good president but because he considered himself something of a master of human rights campaigning and activism which oh no is laughable admittedly but he had some very very high ideas assuming you were not say a black person in the u.s or a racial minority yearning for independence from, say, France. Vietnam. I'm talking about Vietnam. But on the border there, when

the US is supporting Huerta, like, oh, God, I have pearl clutching about him murdering his political opponents. What did you think he was going to do? Now, Wilson was horrified that Huerta would seize power and murder his political opponents so even though the previous US administration many members of which were now part of the Wilson government were totally it was totally fine with this coup and slaughter

Wilson refused to acknowledge him as the president of Mexico and then immediately began pressing other revolutionary groups to turn against the now president huerta now all of this probably really surprised huerta who remember was working with the ambassador to do this like wait i thought you guys were cool what the fuck man i thought we were friends now then huerta actually got one over on wilson who ended up being a pretty smart guy uh wilson withdrew his name from the presidential election instead putting his friend pascal lasso reign in the position of president with himself as secretary of the interior now this seems like a very shrewd political move and it is only if you only care about, like, I don't know, norms and civility and like how things look from the outside.

If you don't look too closely. Sure. Because according to Mexican presidential laws, the secretary of the interior was next in line for president should say anything happened to the president. Now, this is just a coincidence yeah of course uh you know that's kind of funny because i know interior means something different in uh in mexico but like could you imagine the secretary of the interior in the u.s having that much power buffalo like i used to work uh for the uh bureau of land management which falls under under Interior. They have absolutely no power or funding. I just imagine

this guy being next in line for the presidency is kind of hilarious. Now, Wilson decided, fuck it, this is good enough. He's not president anymore. Nothing could possibly happen to Pascal. Now, they gave the impression

to Huerta that this is a very good idea. And if this switch occurs, they would recognize the new government because we said that we wouldn't recognize Huerta as president, not as like his best friend being president. But this is a problem. Remember, Wilson and the US have been telling funding and arming people to fight Huerta and his government. Despite the switch in leadership, people were still fighting them. Because weird how that happens. Like, yeah. Now the U.S. had to backpedal and tell revolutionary leaders to support Lasserain.

Because now we're cool again, for real this time. We're friends. We've always been at war with East Asia. Yeah, that's right. Of course, these rebellious groups and revolutionaries and whatever refused because they weren't puppets. They had their own goals in mind. Like, yes, we will accept American money and guns, but we don't give a shit about America. Which is the opinion that you should have if you're going to take weapons from the government like right you know just say just do whatever you want just do

whatever you want it doesn't matter then of course uh so you know you know just pat tack another one on the board of of how many times the u.s going to help fund and create rebel movements and then lose control of them this is this is a prequel if you will you know then of course lasserane resigned heading the presidency right back to huerta who could who could have seen that coming no way to have possibly foreseen this now the u.s several layers deep into regime change decided to just keep on going it like a sunk cost fallacy, but for an entire nation. So they began to ship weapons and money to various rebel groups fighting Huerta, while Huerta turned Mexico into something resembling a military dictatorship. Now, at one point, Mexican soldiers and American sailors opened fire at one another over a shipment of weapons, leading the U.S. to invade and occupy the city of Veracruz, an occupation that would go on for seven months.

Now, the only thing stopping the U.S. from full-on war, like the Mexican and American governments from full-on war, was really that neither one of them wanted to commit, which is really weird. Now, granted, Mexico is dealing with a lot of internal problems. They probably couldn't fight a war if they wanted to at this point. But the US certainly could. They're like, we really don't want to, even though we already invaded you. We should have gone straight.

It wasn't any moral or ethical reasons why we didn't just continue invading from Veracruz. It was just that we didn't want to. Honestly, it was a lot of like, we probably would need to call up hundreds of thousands of soldiers to do that. And we really can't handle that. So let's not do that. So they didn't.

Now, the main hitching point for the US not to go further, so they said, was Huerta to step down from the government, handing the reins of power over to Carranza, another guy that they had been helping to support. In the meantime, the occupation led to a total breakdown in relations between the U.S. and Mexico and a burning hatred for Huerta on the part of Wilson. Not only did Wilson hate Huerta, but so did a lot of people within Mexico. Now, this led to the so-called Constitutionalist Army to rise up against Huerta after the murder of Madero, and they began to swell with support

and, you know, guns from America. Hey! Now, the Constitutionalist Army was led by Carranza and had the support of several other rebel groups, such as one led by Francisco Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Now, Villa was the commander of the Division del Norte or the North Division. I learned a new word today of the Constitutionalist Army. And this was not a very unified force like via and zapata

had very different goals than caranza but they're like you know what like we've said time and time again the universal theory of fuck that guy they all hated huerta hell yeah man they hated huerta more than they hated each other for now. Eventually, Huerta himself would be forced out of power, bringing about the rise of Carranza, but the US decided this wasn't good enough. Now... So much restraint we're showing here.

That's because we just lack the ability to do anything. This is the age of dreadnoughts and shit. You can't just launch a cruise missile at someone because you don't like them. You actually have to deploy an entire armed force, which we generally don't have.

So, with the rise of Carranza, the war did not end. Instead, the constitutionalists led by President Carranza split from the conventionalists led by Villa and Zapata, and soon the war started right back up again in 1914. The U.S. originally

didn't like Carranza either, despite the fact they had just been supporting and arming him for years. Now, the main reason was that Wilson decided that Carranza wasn't doing good enough as far as democratic reforms, because they

agreed, Carranzaron's was like, yeah, sure. Give me guns and shit. And I'll totally bring democracy to Mexico, dude, for real. And Wilson's like,

okay, you couldn't possibly have. Yeah. Don't I crossed my fingers when I signed that deal with the president of the United States. And like, to be fair, Kron's did do some stuff,

but it wasn't good enough for wilson which who gives a shit like just stop just fucking stop man now we need to go through a fourth president so wilson did more you can't just well you can't just stop at one regime change you can't just stop at two regime changes gotta go for the full hat trick. So Wilson did what else but continued to support Villa and Zapata as they continued to wage war against a newly installed Carranza government. But slowly, Wilson decided that Carranza had done enough changes towards the democratic process and then stopped funding rebels and instead decided to support the new Mexican government. For once

it seems it was over. But it wasn't. Some of this might have actually been because it became very clear that the conventionalists were not going to win. Villa had gotten his shit kicked in in a series of battles in 1915.

He had lost thousands of men. A lot of his material, like cannons, machine guns, it had pretty much ended the power balance of the Civil War going forward. The series of battles at Salia, I believe it's pronounced, the Division of the North North was mostly destroyed. They didn't really have anything to continue the war. So Wilson, at this point, is like,

fuck, I guess we have to support Carranza. He won by default, effectively. Now, wandering around northern Mexico, while Villa was probably just getting madder and madder that his pipeline had been shut off, Wilson made his support for Carranza very, very public. But Via was swearing revenge on both Carranza and the U.S. In reality, his division was in pretty bad shape.

They were forging for food. They lacked ammo. They didn't have replacement weapons anymore to continue their war, and they didn't even have enough horses for their men. That's embarrassing. They were raiding villages that were technically under their control and stealing shit from people.

Oh, God. It's the sack of Constantinople all over again. Everything comes back to Constantinople, baby! And I'll be taking this and this and this it'd be a shame if somebody came by and stole all your horses like i'm doing right now if you don't support my faction of this war uh your enemy might come and steal from you like i'm doing right now who would do that that person would be a monster i'm only stealing from you

because the americans fucked me over. All right. This has nothing to do with me. This isn't my fault. Now, Via had managed to escape these last battles alive, but most of his junior leaders had been captured or killed. And generally, those who are captured were also killed. Wasn't a great time. Those who were captured were also killed. Wasn't a great time. And he was just kind of slowly moseying north away from the Kranza military.

And more importantly, because of these things that we talked about, like him robbing and raiding people within the north, he was losing popular support. So he needed to start shifting blame for all of the things that the US was guilty of in this situation which was you know plenty via losing battles is not one of them but he had to make it that was the case USA USA USA you're just making a list of things that are our fault and it's like 40 fucking things long one thing that

we're not at fault of via losing now via told his men that they lost because the u.s had obviously sold them defective weapons on purpose in order to tank their campaign i assume everybody who believe this forgot that the weapons that they are carrying worked perfectly fine in the battles that they had just fought now this is kind of a fun theory uh because it's like look at all these people i let into combat and got killed clearly this is because they're weapons and not me. Despite the fact both Via and Carranza had been on the same side not that long ago and got their weapons from the exact same source throughout every stage of this war.

While that reasoning is ridiculous, Via and his soldiers were getting mad at the U.S. for other very valid reasons. This is where shit's going to get kind of dark. They accused the U.S. of buying and selling Mexico, mad at the US for other very valid reasons. This is where shit's going to get kind of dark. They accused the US of buying and selling Mexico and, you know, Kranza being a puppet, which, sure. But on top of that,

there was news trickling down from Texas about what was effectively a pogrom being committed against Mexican people in Texas. And this turned into like a revenge cry. Now, this is what is known as the massacre.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of Mexicans across Texas were being lynched and brutalized with full support of the Texas state and aided by law enforcement. Even Texas farm owners were concerned because things were becoming so insane.

Their farm hands were fleeing back south into an active war zone to escape it. Most of this violence is committed out by civilians, but a lot of it was also carried out by the Texas Rangers, who are acting as little more than a death squad across the entire state, even murdering Americans who happened to look Mexican with impunity. Their unhinged violent racism knew no bounds. In El Paso, just over the border, 20 Mexicans were arrested by a local police department for no reason and then forced to be deloused with kerosene

and then they were set on fire. I hate this country, man. I just hate this stupid fucking country. I feel very, very comfortable saying that this was a pogrom. Yep. Yep. Yep. Jesus.

You know, one day we'll have an episode where no one dies. One day. I don't have anything to do with it. I know you, motherfucker. Now, I'm not going to both sides this because that would be um thank you joe it would be impossible but i will say that the u.s was somehow not the only actor attempting to fuel a race war the situation which i do have to say is probably the first time i've had to point this out it's like no no both were doing race war. Now, I will say that the Carranza

so-called San Diego plan was a theory. It was a theorized plan that they could do. It was not carried out. The things that we're talking about in Texas happened. So, credit where credit's due, I suppose. I'm not actually trying to do this plan. Now, I do have to say some people actually blame huerta for coming up with this plan it's kind of hazy now the san diego plan was to harness the racial animosity between texanos and white people to spark a race war throughout the american southwest with the ultimate goal of killing every adult white american and pretty much enslaving the children what the fuck what right obviously this plan never took shape uh only in the nightmares uh and daydreams of very very weird people in the south is this ever actually happening uh but yeah uh like this this only like actually appeared in the form of cross-border raids,

but still, Jesus Christ, guys. It is hard to talk about a pogrom in the state of Texas and be like, well, actually, there was going to be a different one. Fuck. There was also

an incident where fighters that most people assumed to be vias men hijacked a train carrying american employees of the american smelting and refining company who probably deserved it capturing 16 of them stripped them naked and then shot them in the back of their mind i like look man if you're gonna me, at least let me die with dignity. Let me keep my fucking pants on. Yeah, exactly. Come on. You're already executing me, man.

You're already being a dick. I am 6'4 and 245 pounds. You were 6'3 like two weeks ago, you motherfucker. It depends on how much I drank the night before. My clothes are not going to fit you. You can't rob me. I have to go to a specialty store for my clothing. What size shoe do you wear?

Depends on the brand, but normally like 13. Hey, me too. I got some big ass feet. I got tiny hands though. Tiny hands. Many people are saying I have tiny hands. Just let me keep my fucking pants on steal my shoes or whatever but like now i'll try to have my my my dick hanging out while i'm being executed no that's not how

anybody wants to go man rude like light me a cigarette let me do a shot or something before and then yeah anyway uh via eventually encamped around 500 soldiers on the other side of the border, facing the small town of Columbus, New Mexico. The second worst Columbus after Columbus, Ohio, I assume. I assume Columbus, Ohio is the worst Columbus. It's not so bad. That's still Ohio.

I'm sorry. And how has Jim Harbaugh been doing joe uh i went to msu so i i laugh at his failures oh of course you did oh god now that's nice lansing's nice i say as they take the wheels off my car exactly um yeah i i was on um britnology for for Trash Future and a very special Midwest version and I came out as being the part of Michigan Hezbollah in that I don't recognize Ohio's right to exist

that's fair that's not wrong Nate can be happy because I plugged his other show and I don't often get to do that leave this audio up you fuck I'm looking out for you buddy Nate can be happy because I plugged his other show and I don't often get to do that uh leave this audio up you fuck I'm looking out for you buddy uh now

Via's men like I said were in very bad shape um they actually had significantly more men uh than the 500 thought to be like over a thousand but they didn't have enough horses guns or ammunition for them all so just some dudes yeah so they're just like yeah you just go hang out over there and i have to say as a soldier who has done every like did everything possible in my career to get out of

every mission patrol and battle that i could those guys were fucking slick like no no you could totally borrow my gun bro i got you i'll be back here now nobody's really sure on why uh via chose columbus other than it was probably in his opinion a very rewarding target and not for the city itself uh via sent spies and scouts over the border and into the town where he saw the local garrison staffed by members of the 13th cavalry regimentry Regiment, numbering only about 30 guys, which is less than a platoon. Not a whole lot for a military force back then, even for a guard force. The soldiers were

stationed in nearby camp, tasked out to guard the town from possible raids, because these raids had occurred before. Oh, gotcha. The camp also had around 300 more soldiers who were out patrolling, going down to the border, doing various other awful duties. I'm sure.

Sure. Being in the military in the 2000s sucked. I'm sure being in the military in 1915 sucked ass. Congratulations, you have scurvy. That's right. Now go patrol around on your horse until you die of heat stroke because the water will kill you. Just save the right picture in your head here i should point out that the camp is so close to the town that generally the rate on the town is was actually right on the camp like the main target of the camp

uh the main target of the attack was the camp called camp furlong but the battle is generally known as the battle of columbus after the town. Despite the town not having any fucking importance whatsoever, they were effectively butted up against each other. There was no real distance. The town of Columbus was like one hotel and a couple dozen adobe houses.

It was tactically useless. Gotcha. The thing is, the scouts had fucked up pretty bad. They scouted the local camp and assumed that the 50 or so dudes still hanging out there, not on missions, were all there was. Not the hundreds of other soldiers who were still nearby. So when they reported that, no, this is a great target, there's only a couple dozen guys there, VIA saw a great opportunity, not to defeat the American military, but to steal food, guns, and horses. opportunity not to like defeat the american military but to steal food guns and horses so now other people have said that via totally knew about the true numbers of the camp um and

and like due to loyalists uh like a via side within columbus and i have a hard time believing that because this would have been very very stupid for him to launch this attack if he had known right now also a small side note here just that because you know we always stand dunking on really bad officers I mean it's the name of the show effectively so I got one for you via wasn't actually sneaking up on

anyone the local US commander a guy named Colonel Herbert Slocum had been given reports by at least three different people, all of whom Mexican, who hated Villa, telling him like, hey, Villa's forces are massing nearby just over in the Mexican border.

I can show you where. Now, U.S. forces were forbidden from crossing the border for any reason at the time, even if they got word that an attack was coming. So Slocum just kind of shrugged decided he couldn't do anything or even bother to reinforce the border or nearby town

despite the fact that one of the warnings that he got specifically mentioned that columbus and camp burlong were going to be the targets uh i'm not sure if this is important to do with any of this but uh slocum failed out of west point um oh so you know.

Whoops. Yeah, he got commissioned in a different way, but yeah. Fuck it. Am I right, boys? Now, at 4 a.m. at March 9th, 1916, V sent his forces over the border and into the town. Because of his lack of horses,

many of the raiders had to just kind of run. What a ding-a-way to go, man. Like losing rock, paper, scissors, and having to hump it into the US border. Those rocks in my shoe, dick! I put in a request

for new shoes weeks ago, and instead you stole my horse. They caught. Just like, I cannot hear you. Sorry, I can't hear you over the side of me riding away on your horse. Bye.

Because, you know, it's 4 a.m. They caught most of the town and the entire garrison sleeping, and the Raiders began firing wildly into every building they could, while others began to set buildings on fire. The town and the garrison quickly woke up, you know, on the count of all the gunfire and things burning. Civilians grabbed their rifles and began to shoot back, because this is America.

This is Texas, baby! New Mexico, but really, who's counting? This is the same thing. Honestly, New Mexico and Texas are the same, i think honestly new mexico and texas are the same except new mexico sells you more turquoise shit having driven through both of them i feel very comfortable saying that if you close your eyes you can't tell um now uh yeah like the first line of defense was dudes with guns um which also made counting civilian casualties kind of hard because unarmed civilians were shot, but it's also hard to tell, did they have a gun

and then they just got shot? Well, I guess what I'm saying is Via truly found himself explaining things away like he was a cop in this situation. Now, what Via probably thought was going to be an easy smash and grab turn to a pitch battle mostly because of one guy which is not normally something that we could say like no this one guy made this entire battle happen unless he's like the commander or whatever enter one lieutenant john lucas commander of the camp's machine gun troop which

is a troop in cavalry parlance is a company. It's a couple hundred people, like 130-ish people. And this is back in 1915-16 where machine guns were kind of treated as artillery and that you had entire artillery troops and companies

and stuff is very weird. They're still kind of figuring them out. Decided that he would have to go make things interesting all on his own. He awoke in his tent to the sound of gunfire and ran out of his tent barefoot, having only enough time to grab a knife for a weapon. Nice. He fought across

the camp about a half mile with said knife, stabbing and slashing his way until he got to the guard tent. Do we know? Okay. He doesn't know how many people he got. Gruesomely

cut up. Yeah, he just sliced the motherfuckers to ribbons on his way to his guard tent. Once there, he set up and commanded a single machine gun manned by two other soldiers along with him. Now, normally a machine gun crews are two to three people. Back then, it was even more, I think.

One spotter, one shooter, then one person feeding ammo because it was not great technology and the ammo would get all bound up and feed wrong. He eventually took over the machine gun himself because the private who was shooting, who apparently wasn't

doing a great job, he's like, move over, I'll fucking do this leadership now uh once there he began to absolutely lay waste to the raiders and this should not have been this easy because it's 4 a.m. it's dark

right how are you gonna fucking tell who's a civilian who's a one of his soldiers who's a raider he doesn't give a fuck he doesn't give a fuck actually we have to thank via for this for setting the town on fire and illuminating his own positions oh that's fucking brilliant jesus christ man using the glowing light of the burning town uh lucas is able to just absolutely chew the via Raiders apart with this single machine gun. Lucas nearly single-handedly

broke Via's attack, holding them back long enough for the rest of the various pieces of the 13th Regiment to show up and launch a counterattack. During the entire 90-minute long raid, Lucas's gun fired over 5,000 rounds, nearly melting the barrel. Oh, damn.

Via's men rapidly began to run from the town this was equal parts because they didn't want none of that smoke and also because also because their goals had kind of been met and admittedly getting in a pitched battle with an entire US cavalry unit is a bad

fucking idea they had fired on soldiers and civilians alike getting revenge if you believe the idea that there this is a raid on a revenge against texan authorities i don't because they did not raid texas um but uh they also captured over 300 rifles shotguns 80 horses and 30 mules so you know it was a decent smash and grab. Via considered this a victory, but you really can't look at that in any way.

No, unless you're Via, because the raid cost them at least 63 dead on the field. It's thought to be over 100, maybe even up to like almost 200, because, and here's why. War crimes. VIA soldiers who were captured were

not considered POWs. They were considered bandits and executed. They weren't even given a cursory trial. That's rude. I mean, it's not that surprising, really. This is like, at this point, the American Southwest, the american southwest the

american west still very much has that old school mentality um also racism that really helps yeah it's unfortunate um also the dead that were left in the field and their horses were piled up and set on fire. Come on, man. Which, I mean, another war crime, but that one didn't exist yet. I assume because the US government believed that Mexicans were zombies or something and you had to burn their

corpses. Ah, come on. Like, don't burn the corpses. Even now, you're supposed to bury the enemy dead. Like, you can't just leave them out in the i mean you could that's your other options i don't feel like burying them you can just leave them out there but like it's a burn pit baby yield burn pits yeah world war one veterans are gonna be hawking up like a black lung like i heard that uh you got

ears from burning trash i know how i got my burn pit long. Now, in the battle, the U.S. only lost around eight soldiers. Now, I say around because somehow full details are lost. Sometimes one guy gets subtracted or added. It's kind of hard to tell and equal that civilian. So, again, it's hard to tell who is an unarmed or armed civilian. Because, you know, within the most American thing ever, everybody just grabbed their weapons and started firing out their windows in the middle of the night. But yeah, about 16-ish, a couple more wounded. Now, further losses for VIA would be to come. Within a few months, by August,

the National Guard around the country would be called up and nearly 100,000 soldiers would now be on the U.S.-Mexico border. Fuck. Thankfully, something that would never, ever happen again for any shitty racist reasons. These National Guard troops are being deployed from South Dakota to Texas today. And being paid for by private donation,

which is something I was not aware was a thing. Yeah, isn't that fun? This country blows ass. I'm sure nobody's taking notes for future nefarious reasons that has money out there. No, why would they do that? Yeah. Now, these numbers also included pretty much

the entire regular army at the time, which, like we said, was very small. The army commander in the American South, General Frederick Frunston, would push for a full invasion of Mexico in order to capture and bring Villa to justice. And President Wilson agreed. And that is where we'll pick up next time. agreed and that is where we'll pick up next time so like it's really hard i obviously um i don't buy the uh the via revenge raid idea doesn't make any sense he would attack texas um but i do understand he's like well you guys used to give me guns i guess i have to go take them now that makes way more sense to me ever it's it's

unique in an episode where like everybody involves kind of dickheads um like i know i was always told that like pancho via was um romantic raiding revolutionary yeah yeah um like the reason why he raided over the border is because he lost favor um he couldn't even get food from his own like effectively his his own villages and towns that he controlled uh and maybe that maybe he was super popular afterwards i mean like he he was what we're going to talk about next episode catapulted him to be some kind of hero because i mean he did kind of just give the middle finger to the entire u.s military which is kind of funny. But it was definitely more because we were

bad rather than he was good. Right. I don't know. Maybe on the flip side, I would be interested because I know we have listeners in Mexico. I'd be interested to how it's framed in the US compared

to how it's framed in Mexico, honestly. Obviously, I don't speak Spanish. I can't read things that are published about him in Mexico. But on the US side, in the popular theory, he raided across the border because he's a bandit. And then we had to invade Mexico to catch him. And then we just don't talk about race war yeah the race

this is a graph of the race wars in the middle fuck this is a first I don't know how to play that and then you know on the Mexican side maybe he was you know a romantic revolutionary hero who was trying to stick it to the man I don't fucking know. Let me know.

Anyway, that is part one. This is a two-parter. Liam, plug your other show. Well, there's your problem. It's a show about engineering disasters. Go listen to it. Thank you, everybody, for supporting us here at Lines Led by Donkeys.

Just a reminder, if you support the $3 level now, you also get access to my i'm the only one on it and for now uh secondary uh i don't know premium series the history of armenia which is available on our patreon so thank you everybody for donating to that and we will see you next time